Blog of Bermanism

Whoa, I know, two posts in one day!! The world will end in a giant ball of fire by the time you finish reading this very short post.

(kidding, I hope)

Anyway, this post is a plea for comments!! I love writing in my blog, I love writing period. But, in my busy schedule it is hard to find the time to actually post things here. I think that my lack of posting recently has been due to my belief that I lost the majority of my readership during my dissertation writing and moving to San Francisco. As much as I love to write, I would probably worry about it less if I knew that no one was reading my blog. The opposite is also true. If I knew that a bunch of my buddies, and even totally random people were reading my blog, I would probably be inclined to write in it more. So, please take a few seconds and register on the site and post a comment. It can just say “here” (like a roll call) if you are pressed for time. I would also love it if more people did leave comments on my posts. It would be interesting to have some discussions about the content too. Anyway, please post comments, let me know that you’re out there. Thanks everyone for reading!

A few weeks ago, I found myself in the middle of a pretty bad funk. I have no idea why I was feeling badly or why I wasn’t being my normal self, I just know that everything felt, you know, off. The probable factors involved were my back being out of wack and me not being able to row or exercise as much as I’d like to, and the presence of the incessant fog that loomed over the VA hospital in San Francisco where I work. I’ve never been one to be prone to seasonal affective disorder, but I think the two straight weeks of no sun, no exercise, and no life were starting to get to me. The last part, the no life part, may have been the largest contributing factor. I was under a lot of pressure in the lab to produce results that were needed at the last minute. That usually isn’t a problem for me, except that the result that were needed involved a system that no one in the lab had ever used before. I had to test and optimize new antibodies for staining in 1.5 weeks. I think it wore on me a little bit. It certainly involved long hours in the lab and definitely applied a lot of stress to me. Needless to say, I got it done and the results were good.

Anyway, my funk was reaching new heights of funkiness and peaked with me taking it all out on Rachel, which was totally unfair to her. The problem was that she was also feeling funky. So, we decided to take action to break ourselves out of the funkiness. That weekend we took a day driving trip down to Santa Cruz, which is about 80 miles south of here. Rachel hadn’t been there since she was 13, and I had never been there before so we were both pretty excited about it. We went straight to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, which was where the classic 80’s movie The Lost Boys was filmed. This place was great. It was basically an amusement park on the beach, which just can’t be beat in my opinion. Rachel and I walked around a little bit, got some lunch (good falafel), and then decided that the only way to bust out of said funk was to get our roller coaster action on. So, we started by riding the oldest roller coaster in operation in the United States, the Giant Dipper. I’ll tell you that there is nothing better to get you out of a depressive funk than to be thrown around by a great roller coaster, even an old-timer like the Giant Dipper. You just can’t help but to laugh and scream and come off of it with a smile plastered onto your face. After about six or seven other thrill rides and some Dippin Dots, our funks had been effectively obliterated. So, we left the boardwalk and headed over to the famous lighthouse to the north of the boardwalk. It was beautiful there, but more interesting were the packs of surfers that gathered there to catch the large waves that naturally pound past the light house point. Some of those guys were just awesome! Then, I wanted to go see UCSC, since I’m currently a very big fan of the UC system. I’ve got to say, I was little surprised by the campus. There was, in fact, no discernible campus. I’m not talking about no campus like Boston University, which is just sort of on the side of a street, I’m talking about a campus shoved into the middle of a forest up on a hill. It was very beautiful, but the campus reminded me more of a summer camp in the Rockies than a major university. It was strange. Maybe it would have felt more like a campus if school had been in session, but the campus was totally empty. It was a very strange experience.

Anyway, we went from there to San Jose to meet an old friend of our for dinner, just before she was moving away, back to Austin, TX. It was a nice dinner followed by our drive back to Sausalito. We both came back feeling calmed, refreshed, and like we had both largely broken out of our funks. We both agreed to go jump on a roller coaster the next time we were feeling functified, before we start yelling at each other. It is really nice that our relationship is so solid. We can always fix each other together, and that is a great feeling.

It seems that I’ve managed to screw up my back. Once I returned from Master’s Nationals, my foot went curiously numb. Actually, it sort of felt like someone had taped two small band-aids on the top of my second and third toes, which was a really weird feeling. Anyway, I was concerned to say the least. I had been training really hard for the last few months for Nationals and I had reached my top physical condition of the last 7 years. I was really bummed because I really didn’t want to lose that, but whatever this problem was, it could ruin my ability to row forever if I didn’t take care of it.

After a little consultation with Rach, we decided that I had a bulging disk in my back that was pinching my L5 dorsal root, which receives sensory information from my foot. That meant that I needed to lay off anything strenuous to that part of my back until it had healed. So, I gave myself two weeks off of rowing, just enough to feel like total shit after not working out for two weeks, and just enough so that a few sessions of hard rowing would mostly restore my previous condition.

Those two weeks were actually pretty nice. I got sleep!! I know, it is hard to believe. I woke up every day feeling rested, relaxed, and ready to work. I was able to concentrate much better at work and I got some really good things done there. I wasn’t tired by 10pm, so I was able to stay up and get some things done around the house that I’ve wanted to do for a while. But, I was losing my physical condition and I could feel that. It was starting to suck. Aside from that, I always start to get a little depressed if I don’t work out, probably because I’m addicted to the activity and the affect that it has on my stress levels (which are notoriously high in my field of work). Anyway, my foot felt a little better, I didn’t have that weird nerve echo anymore, so I went rowing in a single and felt great. Sadly, the weird sensation came back that night and I woke up with pain in my lower back. I had planned on getting on the erg for an hour of power the next day, but decided to leave my back alone.

Anyway, I asked my boss (who is a neurologist) what he thought about it. He said that these things usually resolve on their own and that no amount of resting seems to make it get better any faster. He did say to make sure not to make it worse because a full herniation usually means back surgery. Honestly, that made me feel a lot better. When I was describing my symptoms to him, I noticed that I am curiously without pain in any part of the injury, it is just numb. He put a name to the injury and called it peroneal neuropathy. I looked that up and it seemed that I had a classic case, except that I didn’t have any pain. So, I finally consulted my brilliant physical therapist wife, who proceeded to give me a bunch of stretches and exercises for the injury. One exercise in particular, a piriformis stretch, immediately made the numbness go away! I was so psyched. She said that maybe I have piriformis syndrome and not a back problem. I thought about it, looked it up, and decided that I don’t have that, mainly because of the lack of pain in my butt that is associated with that condition. But, the exercises were helping, so I decided to go rowing again. I took out a single for about 8k, but made sure that I didn’t go harder than about 25% pressure the whole time. I got off the water and did Rachel’s stretches. I felt great. I went again the next day, but this time went a lot harder. It was again great. So, here I am this morning, feeling pretty good, not 100%, but ready to start getting back to the exercise portion of my life. I suppose that if you have to be addicted to something, exercise isn’t the worst thing, unless you overdo it.